D-1 digital video transfer – new additions and economies of size
A recent addition to the Greatear digitising studio is a BTS D-1 digital video cassette recorder.
As revolutionary as it was at the time, early digital audio and video tape recording is more threatened with obsolescence than earlier analogue formats.
Introduced in 1986, D-1 was the very.. →
Digitising Audio Tape – Process, Time & Cost
Last week we wrote about the person time involved in transferring magnetic tape to digital files, and we want to tell you more about the processes involved in digitisation work.
While in theory the work of migrating media from one format to another can be simple, even the humble domestic cassette.. →
From digital files back to analogue tape
The bread and butter work of Greatbear Analogue and Digital Media is to migrate analogue and digital magnetic tape to digital files, but recently we were asked by a customer to transfer a digital file to ¼ analogue tape.
The customer was concerned about the longevity of electronic digital.. →
Real time transfers – digitising tape media
In theory the work we do at Greatbear is very simple: we migrate information from analogue or digital magnetic tape to electronic digital files.
Once transferred, digital files can be easily edited, tagged, accessed, shared or added to a database. Due to the ubiquitous nature of digital media.. →
Archiving for the digital long term: information management and migration
As an archival process digitisation offers the promise of a dream: improved accessibility, preservation and storage.
However the digital age is not without its archival headaches. News of the BBC’s plans to abandon their Digital Media Initiative (DMI), which aimed to make the BBC media.. →
Digitising Ampex U-matic KCS-20 Video Tapes
We are currently digitising a collection of U-matic Ampex KCS-20 video tapes for Keith Barnfather, the founder of Reeltime Pictures.
Reeltime Pictures are most well-known for their production of documentaries about the BBC series Doctor Who. They also made Doctor Who spin-off films, a kind.. →
Digitise VHS Tape – Martin Smith’s Life Can Be Wonderful
In February 2013 we digitised a VHS tape from Martin Smith, the 1994 documentary Life Can Be Wonderful. The VHS tape was the only copy of the film Smith owned, and it is quite common for Great Bear to digitise projects where the film maker does not have the master copy. This is because original copies.. →
Digitising & Restoring Personal Archives – 1/4 inch reel to reel audio tape
In today’s digital society most people have an archive. On personal computers, tablets and mobile devices we store, create and share vast amounts of information. We use archives to tell others about our lives, and the things that are important to us.
Gone are the days when archives were.. →
Audio cassette transfer and Martin Parr’s The Non Conformists
We were recently sent a collection of recorded interviews with residents of Hebden Bridge, a mill town in the Pennines. They were recorded on regular, domestic tapes of the mid-1970s, the kind that were sold in shops such as Woolworths or WHSmith.
As magnetic cassette tapes go, these cheaper.. →
8 track cartridges and museum tour
8 track cartridges were a very popular domestic audio format in the United States, although there were also sold in the UK and Europe. The growth of the 8 track was synonymous with its use in car industry, as it allowed people to listen to music on the move.
Although phased out in the early.. →
Delivery formats – to compress or not compress
After we have migrated your analogue or digital tape to a digital file, we offer a range of delivery formats.
For video, using the International Association of Sound & Audiovisual Archives Guidelines for the Preservation of Video Recordings, as our guide, we deliver FFV1 lossless files.. →
VHS / Hi8 video tapes digitised for The Great Hip Hop Hoax
For a while now we’ve been working with film maker Jeanie Finlay on various projects, digitising archive video footage in varying tape formats and standards.
Her latest project, soon to be premiered in the US:
…is a film about truth, lies and the legacy of faking everything.. →
digitising tape issues
The main work of Greatbear is to make analogue and digital tape-based media accessible for people living in a digital intensive environment. But once your tape-based media has been digitised, is that the end of the story? Do you never need to think about preservation again? What issues arise for information.. →
Collection of obsolete of audio and video tape machines for digitisation
Over a several years, Greatbear has been collecting and restoring old audio and video tape machines. By trawling through the online car boot sale that is ebay, or travelling round the country to visit real ones, the collection has built up over time and now constitutes over seventy working machines.. →
Digitising U-matic tape: Diagnosing & Treatment
We have recently completed a job for Quarry Faces, the Mendip Hills Community Heritage Project which has been funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Quarry Faces gave us 20 U-matic video tapes that were commissioned for a corporate video in the 1980s.
The Quarry Faces project aims to tell the.. →
The Grain of Video Tape
From U-matic to VHS, Betacam to Blu Ray, Standard Definition to High Definition, the formats we use to watch visual media are constantly evolving.
Yet have you ever paused to consider what is at stake in the changing way audio-visual media is presented to us? Is viewing High Definition film.. →
Nakamichi 680 Discrete Head Cassette Deck and Music & Liberation
In 2012 Greatbear digitised a selection of audio and audio-visual tape for the Heritage Lottery Funded exhibition, Music & Liberation.
The first job was to migrate a short film by a feminist film making collective called Women in Moving Pictures who were based in Bristol in the early 1980s… →
video machine room equipment racks / patchbay rewire
With the work we are involved with we have to use, keep working and store a large amount of old and usually large tape machines and other electronics. With a couple of machines it’s easy to store and easy to connect but as you grow and the variety and scope of machines develops it can soon become.. →
video tape obsolescence – spares supplies disappearing
Greatbear protects tape-based analogue and digital media from the wave of obsolescence faced by these formats. The speed of technological change in the 20th and 21st centuries has been, and continues to be, breathtaking. Consider the amount of tapes and machines that have been made since the invention.. →
VHS-C and full size VHS (NTSC and PAL)
‘We’re not sure what on here’ is a common phrase used by customers who send tape to the Greatbear. Spurred on by curiosity or creative necessity, they contact us to help them solve the mystery.
This is exactly what documentary film maker Jeanie Finlay did when she sent us.. →
greatbear at work
A selection of images from the Greatbear engine room on a typical day at the office.
Repairing, cleaning, baking, testing, sorting and transferring are our daily bread. The work is done to the backdrop of miscellaneous audio and audio-visual recordings ranging from early 1990s house music to.. →
Digital Betacam tapes
As well as analogue tape, at Greatbear we also migrate digital tape to digital files. Digital media has become synonymous with the everyday consumption of information in the 21st century. Yet it may come as a surprise for people to encounter digital tape when we are so comfortable with the seemingly.. →
Digitising Betacam SP video tapes
We have recently been digitising Betacam SP (‘superior performance’) video recordings, a cassette based component analogue format that is used extensively in the broadcast world. Betacam SP offered fantastic video and audio quality from its introduction in 1986, and a very similar digital.. →
Sony High Density V-60H video tape digitised for Comhaltas
We were recently contacted by Frank Whelan of the Comhaltas Regional Resource Centre who wanted us to digitise a recording of the Fleadh Cheoil traditional music festival in Buncranna, Co. Donegal in 1975.
Frank sent us an EIAJ ½ inch video that was recorded on a Sony High Density V-60H video.. →